here's to you

After going to Stillwater last night, seeing friends and enjoying nothing but their company I began to realize something. These friends were still new friends. In the grand scheme of my 23 years, I had only really known them for 6 months.

The best 6 months of my life. I have had so much happen in that period of time I not sure where it started. Maybe there was no official start. I'm ok with that, I'm ok with not knowing how all this got started, how I had met some of the best people I know, how I had those late nights I laughed so hard my face hurt (once needed cryotherapy) and how I was going to miss them. I do kind of wonder why I didn't meet them all sooner. Maybe because we were all different people before then, maybe we wouldn't have clicked as well as we had if we had met earlier. You know what, I don't need to know the reason for that either.

Now the last 6 months were not all happy things, yes the joyous events won out in numbers but it was no shutout. I had ended my college career in Stillwater, the town I got so well at knowing. I now had to move back to my hometown of OKC, a bigger city, a city with my old friends. Things were changing. For the better? For the worse? Who knows... I still haven't figured that out. I know two thing however: 1. I miss Stillwater and the people in it 2. I am where I am supposed to be.

Another big change: back to the single life. Something I had not seen in awhile. It wasn't new to me, just different. New doors were being opened. I am now in the middle of figuring out what's been walking through those doors. Sometimes there are more doors than I can count and other times I can't seem to find any doors. Some doors contained nothing, some contained new destinations/careers and others contained ideas I had written off.

6 months, it was all it took to turn my life upside down. Upside down in the very best way. Even with my moving I'm still able to get to those nights of face hurting cryotherapy, apples to apples and even small nights of HIMYM. I have been recently driving to places that I had never driven so often to. I think I've driven to Tulsa more times in the last month than I ever have my entire life. I hope you all are reading into that, I love you all that much.

Here's to the last 6 months...

Oceans 1

Why is it life always seems to speed up when you're not ready. Is it because we're in fact never ready? Maybe it's because our wants change, maybe our needs change. Life will change speeds regardless of my say so what's really the purpose of worrying. However, you cannot sit back and hope for it to return to its previous state.

That being said, there is obviously something on my mind. My life has sped up and I feel like it has sped up without me. Time to play catch up. This intro is getting old...

Meat and potatoes of it: I, Connor P. Hamby, want to work overseas for a purpose greater than myself. I want to travel distances further than I'm prepared for, I want to converse with people I cannot converse with and I want to be uncomfortable. I'm still in the middle of putting the why into words but I just know that they are true. Anyone reading this knows the where of my desires lie. I just love it there, I love the food, I love the people and I love its attitude or lack there of one.

Well my friend overseas emailed me with the plan to get me there. The plan is not tricky but has been tweaked for the recent economic situation. You see the company doing the sending is financially responsible for everyone they send and since times are funny right now they have cut down on their numbers and are only sending people to "high need" areas. The plan is tweaked in such a way so that I end up where I would work best, the place where I want to go and I wouldn't get there till around August of 2010.

The Catch: For all this to go down as planned it needs to start ahead of the curve. I know it sounds like "the plan" is all behind-the-scenes and against the rules but it would really just involve some old fashioned word-of-mouth referrals. It all has become time sensitive. The time has come to get this ball rolling and the plan needs to start right about... sooner than I'm ready for.

I was so ready for this a month ago but things keep popping up. Not even bad things, just things. Things I'm just have to wait out. If anyone knows me well enough, I don't really jump at things quickly, or even at all. Jumping may be a bad verb for me. The only thing I've ever jumped at, maybe, is a second bowl of ice cream. So I'm sure I'll keep writing these things down in the future, as ambiguous as possible of course.

In the words of Danny Ocean to Linus Caldwell, "you're either in or you're out... right now"

a greater obstacle

I really want to fill this page with witty comments and wise banter about how I see this life in front of me. But I can't right now; is it just not in my mind or am I just tired from work or is it not in my genes at all? Maybe this just isn't what I am good at. I have recently discovered, well not discovered but maybe verified, when it comes to telling my stories, I tell them in a very scattered way. Well it's time to just go with that...

Here's out my life goes at the moment, I don't know what to do. I thought I had my goals in place and that I was on the right track to achieve them. I had anticipated there would be obstacles, those little things that would slow you down or make you change a tiny part while still maintaining the original goal.

I didn't know there would be things showing up in my life that I can't even call obstacles, but something bigger than that. They were new directions. But they greatly affect my original goals. Now that I've seen these new things standing in my way, I am not even discouraged. However confusion has become the my main trait.

I now have more than one thing in my field of vision. This one more thing came out of nowhere. It came from somewhere I had never thought of, somewhere I had never been and somewhere truly good. My original goal is so true and so right and so...Connor. What do you I do in the mean time when I come across something else, something that has so much potential, pushes me further than I know how to go and a place I know I will eventually end up anyway. But is the timing right? Is this what I am supposed to see now or is it just the greatest distraction I have ever seen?

Then the fear comes in. Do I continue on my path toward that long-held goal that I know is right for me? It is not a bad way to go, I go ahead and do my original plan and have the time of my life and come back to maybe find a way to do it all over again. BUT if I do that, will that other great plan still be there, be available? There in lies the risk of it all. One plan greatly affects the other. It is even possible that doing one could end the other.

There we go,

I have one great plan for my life. One that would leave me speechless for years.

Then that other came along, that could possibly do the same.

Untitled (really? this IS the title)

Months and months ago my friends inspired me to start a blog, a place where the public can read my thoughts, where others may even learn something about me or just a place to see that I'm nuts.

I'm the type of person that always have thoughts running through my head and I sometimes regrettably over-analyze everything. I don't analyze everything necessarily because I need to figure it out but partially because I find it fun. I'm not sure what makes it so fun, it just is.

There are probably a lot of things I could actually blog about right here but I'm the kind of person that feels like when things are too ambiguous, it's nothing at all. So I'm trying to find a good balance between actually telling details and ambiguity.

If I let the details out then I might be letting too much of me out. If I keep all the details in then I might as well not be saying anything at all.

Blogging=balance beam of information

So...I will be trying to find that balance. The balance or line moves all the time. I can think of two factors that effect this line.

1. How sensitive the information may be to myself or others

2. How comfortable I am with this blogging thing thus just letting stuff out for all to see.

Someday I'll have that story to write. Where all details can be said and the story can be understood fully.

But until that day, I'll be riding that line between too much information and not enough.

Trainwreck

When I listen to music I usually connect it to where I am or what I'm doing. Some music brings to mind exciting, adventurous times, some bring slower, predictable ones, some bring thoughts of random times that leave you questioning why this song sticks to such an odd memory while others bring up emotions you're glad you only lived once.

"Trainwreck" - Mat Kearney

There it is, that's the image I get in my head when I hear this song. I know it's odd but there's more to it than just a crowded chinese shuttle bus.

I'm past the point of returning
For you I'm ruined and broken
There is no way of me turning
You've got my heart in the open

I see it shrink in the distance
In the glow of your glory
And I never will miss this
Bottom line of the story

I see the ocean come crashing
Under lavender skies
I see clouds come flashing
Now tell me, who am I?

Your're the air that I'm breathing
While I'm lying there sleeping
You're the cool of the evening
Now you got me believing,

Trainwreck, I'm a trainwreck for
Trainwreck, I'm a trainwreck
Trainwreck. I'm a trainwreck for
You (Oh lord. yes I am)

I'll kiss it all with a farewell
Goodbye, how you doing
And let it echo in stairwells
All these songs of my ruin

Now watch me climb my own cross
Without a loss for these words
As I motion a moment's silence
Let it fly with the birds

All else I got without you
Is mucha ado about nothing
I'd rather stand by you gone
Than on the throne of another

You had me all from the start
I count it lost every part
I'll sing it out in the dark
You've got a grip on my heart

Where could I turn from you
The darkest nights, you know you'd find a way
What else have I to do
What words are there left to say
You are the air that I breathe in
Here is my heart I give
You are all of my reason
You are my reason to live

These are the lyrics that were running circles through my head for 4 hours. Nothing to see but barren mountains and a muddy river and nothing to smell but the farmers' stock for the market.

But it was during those very moments that I began to realize something big. It was at that very moment that I realized my life was to be ruined, ruined for the better and ruined so that my life may not go wasted. I realized that I could be a part of something bigger than myself. It was something that has become such a good fit for me in every way.

"The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet"

-Frederick Buechner